My Returning
by noble silver dagger
Summary: There are some mistakes that can never be undone. All that is left is to pick up the pieces, and try to be a better person in the future. Life hurts; you can either run from it, or learn from it. Original (well, mostly) story set in the Warcraft (specifically WoW) 'verse about a year into the Pandaria expansion. Planned as part 1 of a 3-part story.
1. Introduction

The Story of My Returning

The first thing I felt was the pain.

Not a searing pain. Not a stabbing pain. Not even the sickening, stomach-clenching pain of broken bones and dislocated joints.

No, the first pain I felt upon awakening was the pain of a bloody roaring headache, the kind that come calling when the last of the thistle has floated through your bloodstream and left an indelibly sharp mark on your synapses. Apparently I was still alive. I figured that you couldn't have withdrawal headaches if you were dead.

Once the headache had sorted out what it was and where it was staying, I remembered that there was the rest of me still waiting around somewhere. A quick corporeal roll call established that I still had all ten fingers and the corresponding number of toes at the end of what appeared to be the right number of limbs. Progress.

With a titanic effort I summoned the strength to lift my hand to my face. Other than the stickiness of what I could only presume was my own blood matting my hair to my skin, it seemed to be the same face I remembered seeing in the mirror. More progress.

"Feel free to, I don't know, get off my kitchen table at any point."

Ah. The voice of angels greeting my beleaguered soul.

"I'm serious, Elf. Unless you want me to serve dinner right over top of you."

I cracked my eyes open to see straight at the nose of a petite green creature with generous handfuls of curves in all the right places giving me the sort of look normally reserved for hawkstrider droppings on the sidewalk. She had a hand on one imperious hip that clearly said this was all my fault. I opened my mouth to ask what exactly all this was, but all that came out was a sort of garbled rasping. Not my most charismatic moment. The green skinned vixen smirked. "Cat got your tongue?"

I managed what I hoped was a charming smile and decided to save the questions for later. Once I was sitting more or less upright, the room slowly spinning, I gave my sweet angel another look. The gobliness stood with an eyebrow arched snarkily while I got my bearings. The somehow petitely large nose and generous lips of her race vied for attention with the numerous piercings glinting from reflected firelight. There was a sort of rough beauty there, if you were into that sort of thing.

"Done eyeing the scenery, Elf?" Her eyebrows did a fascinatingly choreographed dance that ended with the opposite one up before she turned from me and veritably sashayed to an elaborate goblin-work stove. I had time to get acquainted with another round of the thistle-withdrawal headaches before she returned with a surprisingly simple chalice of something hot and steaming. It smelled foul, which meant it was probably medicinal. Apparently my lip curled further in disgust than I intended because my saviour's lips parted in the third most malicious grin I'd seen in my life. The liquid in the chalice tasted every bit as foul as the smell had promised. After I had finished choking it down, the greasy burning sensation seemed to lubricate my vocal cords.

"Where am I?"

Not quite my usual smooth tones, but speech of any kind was a good start.

"At the moment you're in my kitchen. If you wanna be a little more specific, you're in my kitchen in my sweet lil inn on the Hellfire Peninsula." My sweet saving angel waited a moment while this sank in. My head sank into my hands and my eyes closed again. Hellfire Peninsula. Outlands.

That explained the reek of sulfur and decomposing plant matter permeating the air.

"Where did you find me? How long have I been...?"

The gobliness turned away to busy herself with the stove and such. For a moment I wasn't sure if she had heard me. My voice was still weak and crackly.

"You were halfway off the Edge. Washed up out of the Nether like a bit of flotsam. Not a scrap of clothing on ya and what looked like about two elves worth of blood." She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, a flash of gold behind opalescent blue bangs. I glanced down at myself and noticed that while the worst of the blood may be gone, I was indeed just as she found me, save for a particularly ugly pair of shorts to shield my modesty.

"I...see. Thanks for this, then, I suppose." I plucked at the musty yellow shorts with hideous pink waistband and was rewarded with another malicious grin. "I still don't know how long I've been out."

"Beryl."

"What?"

"My name. It's Beryl. You know, like the gem." Her tiny hips were cocked at an angle I recognized. An unbidden smirk crept onto my face and I raised an eyebrow, only to cringe as the headache took notice.

"Beryl. What a lovely name for a lovely lady." Even being primarily nude, sore,and recently caked in blood, I couldn't help myself. I was going to burn in a very special hell for this someday.

The gobliness- Beryl- turned around and gave me a glancing over that I was very familiar with. Apparently that hell was going to have to wait in line. "So there's some truth in what they say about you blood elven males. You were out," She turned and leaned against the stove, crossing her arms to watch my reaction, "Four days after I found you. Considering you drifted out of the Nether... it could easily have been more. Most of the cuts on your body were already healed, that extra elf of blood dried to a cake. You were lucky I came along when I did, there were worms starting to sniff right up to the edge after ya."

Nausea had risen up to accompany the headache at her recounting. Stripped of my heavily enchanted and enhanced robes, it would have taken at least a week for anything but the most superficial of cuts to heal where they didn't pull when I moved. Considering I'd been able to move well enough thus far... How long had I drifted in that interminable emptyness that was engulfing the tainted Outlands? Bile rose up in my throat. Beryl calmly handed me an empty stone bowl and politely looked away as I retched up the foul tea she had given me earlier. As the heaves subsided and a damp towel had restored what little dignity I had claim to, I cast another likely pitiful glance of thanks her way. A small nod of acknowledgment prefaced a shift of her demeanor from matter-of-fact to iron-spined stern.

"Now," Beryl's voice noted that there would clearly be no argument, "Get off my kitchen table and get yourself cleaned up before I get my sons to bundle you off to the shower."

I arched a brow imperiously at the mention of her sons, the effect somewhat spoiled by the way my legs threatened to buckle as I slid my body from the table and stood.

"And I'm expected to go about in what, exactly?"

The gobliness raised a ladle imperiously in my direction.

"You're expected to get your pretty arse down the hall and into the tub before I call my boys on you." She turned back to her stove dismissively, clearly assured that I would do as I was told. "One of my boys is out looking for something your size."

I sketched a rough approximation of my best sarcastic bow to her back and headed down the garishly carpeted hallway meekly enough. My head throbbed with each step. The thistle-withdrawal was demanding my attention with a vengeance- although it could just as easily be my eyes protesting the lurid purple-and-beige striped wallpaper with the chartreuse bananas. The cyan and puce tiling of the washroom was a welcome relief. I installed myself in the waiting tub of tepid water with a litany of colourful curses and much cajoling of stiffened joints. As I sat with my knees drawn nearly to my chest, rinsing the remains of dried blood from my hair, I had a moment to sort out the tangled mass of half-remembered things lurking in the back of my mind. Everything up to my arrival in the blasted Outlands was as clear as crystal, and not much after. Sure, I remembered hours of frantic research in the Scryer's library in Shattrath, but there the hours began to blur, days slipping into each other in an endless stretch of time. I was in the passionate throes of some new discovery, some fervent source for a great power which I could not, now, recall.

I spared a moment from my reverie to avail myself of a cake of scented soap which had been set out for my use. The pungent scent of bruiseweed extract and steelbloom pollen hit me like an ogre's fist to the gut. It was the same soap she had used. My unwanted traveling companion. The enabler of all my bad habits and vain pursuits.

Dementia.

I closed my eyes as the disjointed memories washed over me. Her smile when some menial chore I gave her told her she had won my favour. Her laugh of joy when I overcame some new obstacle. The light of insanity in her eyes as she gleefully preceded me into unimaginable dangers.

The feel of her body entwined with mine.

Emotions my convalescent body was not prepared for shot through me like a torrent of envenomed darts. Irritation for the way she always followed me around. Confusion at the thought of never seeing her again. Rage at her for abandoning me like this. Relief that I was no longer, in some perverse way, responsible for her pitiable life. Regret for not pushing her away more firmly, for taking advantage of her illness for my own selfish purposes. And laced through it all like the fel taint that blanketed all of the shattered Outlands, guilt. Guilt for her death. Guilt for the death of the child she carried.

I lingered in that tub for an immeasurable stretch of time. The water cooled still further, as I sat with my knees drawn almost to my chest and head bowed into my hands. A lifetime would not be enough time to come to terms with what had transpired, and yet I still could not remember the whole of it. By the end of my contemplation in that tepid water I was sure of only four things.

I am Menelus R'aivaona, last son of the R'aivaona line.

I made a mistake.

The woman who loved me is dead, along with our unborn child.

Talanedra was going to kill me when I got home.


	2. Chapter One

The steady hum of the zepplin's motor coupled with the creaking of ropes and timbers had become a reassuringly unremarkable hum in the back of my mind over the last few hours. The dimly lit lands drifted by peacefully below, a stark contrast to the sickly aura that would soon fill the sky as we drew nearer to the cursed lands of Tirisfal and the forsaken Undercity. The night wind tangled my hair further, but I had not cared about trivialities like appearance for several weeks now. I still wore the mismatched clothing that Beryl's sons had found for me, and the facial hair that grew so slowly on my race had been left untended long enough for a coarse growth of stubble to shadow my features. Events from the past few weeks had slipped further and further from my thoughts, until I was driven only by the vague memory of some terrible shadow looming over my past. There was nearly a year or so of time consumed by this shade. At first, the gradual loss of my memories had bothered me, but by now the sensation of things half-remembered lurking in my mind was familiar. Still, I couldn't keep myself from considering this dim stretch of time as I lingered at the zepplin's railing, watching the countryside slip by without really seeing it.

I couldn't tell you how long the orc had been standing beside me, for he stepped exceptionally softly for his kind. We stood at the railing in what might be called a companionable silence if one of us hadn't been in such a foul mood. Minutes stretching by with the throb of the zepplin's engines filling the silence. Until…

"I can loan you a razor."

The orc's words caught me off guard.

"What?"

"A razor. For your face. Since apparently you've misplaced yours." The orc grinned, clearly thinking himself amusing. I gave him a sneer and turned from him a bit, having no intention of speaking to anyone, least of all some self-absorbed green-skinned beast. Apparently this orc had been raised without manners or taught the finer points of the social graces, for instead of taking the hint- a rather blatant one, in my mind- and removing himself from my presence, the sage-skinned bulk merely settled himself more comfortably at the railing, reaching up to stick a thick, calloused finger in one hairy ear and belch loudly. Disgusting. At this point I was weighing the benefits of returning to the stuffy confinement of the belowdecks of the zeppelin against the prospect of this orc's continued company. The brute made another attempt to strike up a conversation, which I naturally ignored. I had become a firm believer in the theory that if you ignored something unpleasant long enough, it would go away.

This worked for all of half a minute before I felt my shoulder prodded by a thick finger. One raven brow arched in a look calculated to make anyone on the receiving end promptly reassess their priorities in life, and I turned to give the intrusive orc the full effect. Instead, I was met with a face broadly grinning around surprisingly white tusks. Eyes which on any other orc I would call piglike sparkled with mirth, even when presented with my withering glare. And a heavy hand that rested with far too much familiarity on my shoulder.

"Remove your hand, orc, or would you prefer I remove it for you?" I growled out in the most menacing tone I could muster. Even to my ears, it sounded flat, uninspired. Really, I didn't care. It was all I could summon up to express my displeasure with the situation. I just wanted to be left alone. Was that too much to ask?

Apparently it was. The noisome stench and odiferous clatter of the belowdecks of the ship was suddenly a refuge compared to sharing the ship rail with my unwelcome companion. I settled on a barrel with a sigh. Sweet relief, for a moment anyway; until a green-skinned hand holding a cake of soap slowly inserted itself into my field of view. I stared, too incredulous at this orc's persistence to be offended.

"What the fel is this?" I snarled. The orc's hand and the soap in it withdrew for the moment.

"You haven't seen yourself in a while, have you, elf?" The Orc wondered. I opened my mouth to retort, but couldn't find any justification for myself. A moment later, the green-skinned and calloused hand reappeared with a travel-sized mirror in a wooden housing pointing my way. The face that looked back at me was not one I would have recognized as my own prior to my stay at Beryl's inn; only the familiar shape of my mother's eyes remained unchanged to display my lineage. Hair that should have been the iridescent black of a raven's wing was instead matted and dull, the sort of black seen in the greasy smoke from goblin engines. A single streak of yellowed grey trailed from one temple where hair had grown back in over a scar. My face, always angular, looked something like a particularly well-preserved Forsaken after a few decades. Once-alabaster skin was closer to the greyed hues of old masonry, where it wasn't hidden by a short yet robust beard that would have done a young Dwarf proud. Eyes that were the mirror image of my mother's looked out from deeply hollowed sockets with bruised lids. My inability to sleep consistently for the past countless weeks was catching up to me in more than just irritability. As I catalogued each change, it was as though I was looking, detached, at the face of a stranger. There was no recognition of the face as being my own, only a sort of mildly interested numbness. I watched in the mirror as my hand rose to tentatively touch the abrupt angle of my cheekbone, to finger the streak of white in my hair.

I looked awful.

The orc waited silently all the while that I spent examining my own condition. Finally I handed the mirror back to him, abashed and the closest thing to humble I'd ever been in my life.

"Perhaps I'll take you up on that offer of soap, after all." I muttered. The strange orc merely nodded quietly and handed me again the comb and cake of soap, leaving me belowdecks with a bowl of lukewarm, oily water.

Some time later, when I was cleaned up and feeling slightly more like myself again, I wandered back out to the main area shared by the other passengers. I found the orc and a troll playing at a game of dice, and although talking to another living soul was not high on my priority list, I'd decided that I was damn tired of being lonely. So I approached the pair and sat down, stiffly, and without a word.

The troll looked up from his latest roll in the game and in a moment had taken my measure. "Hey. Elf. Joo better be lookin to join this game; maybe the damn orc will stop cleaning me out with easier prey."

The Orc laughed at this, his chuckle a rich belly-laugh at the troll's complaining. "You're only sore because you're losing, Kai'drak."

The troll - Kai'drak - snorted. "Ya, of course I'm sore about losing. Dat's generally what a body gets sore about. So, Elf," Kai turned to fix me with a particularly mischievous, toothy grin, "How about it? Joo gonna join in the slaughter?"

"I'm afraid I don't have any money…" I began to apologize, only for the troll to brush aside my excuses with one tri-digit hand.

"Don't joo worry about it. I'll loan ya some. Just want to see da orc finally go on a losing streak." Kai unceremoniously dumped a small bag of coins in front of me as the orc - whose name I'd finally learn was Kurthun- began explaining the rules to Spider's Gambit.


End file.
